Highlights from the campaign finance disclosures made by candidates in their first quarterly reports of the campaign season.
I found the ‘Notable contributors’ section quite interesting and was surprised by the amount of money John Edwards got from Dallas.
Have you ever dreamed of being carried into the sky by a giant bouquet of colorful toy balloons?
That’s the idea behind cluster ballooning. The pilot wears a harness, to which a cluster of large, helium-filled balloons are attached. Control is achieved by releasing ballast to ascend, or by bursting balloons to descend.
The most famous cluster balloon flight took place in 1982. Larry Walters, with no prior ballooning experience, attached 42 helium weather balloons to a lawnchair, intending to go up a few hundred feet, but instead soaring to 16,000. Surprisingly, Walters survived his flight. However, both before and since Walters’ adventure, experienced balloonists have experimented with helium balloon clusters, some rising to even greater heights.
PALMA DE MALLORCA, Balearic Islands — One is the king of grass, the other the king of clay. On Wednesday, Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal will be king of both.
Four-time Wimbledon champion Federer plays two-time French Open winner Nadal in an exhibition on a customized half-clay, half-grass court on this Spanish island.
“It’ll be fun to find out what it’s like to play on a court with mixed surfaces,” Federer said Tuesday. “And it ought to be interesting to see who chooses the better tactic.”
Organizers needed 19 days and $1.63 million to create the court, which divides the surfaces by halves for a unique match in which a player can receive on clay and hit a winner on grass — or vice versa.
